【经济学人】仰望星辰丨2016.12.24丨总第772期

The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. By Dava Sobel. Viking; 324 pages; $30. To be published in Britain by 4th Estate in January.

《玻璃宇宙:哈佛大学天文台的女性如何掌握了星球研究》一书由Dava Sobel所著、共324页、定价30美元，将于一月份由新闻界出版社在英国出版。

IN THE late 19th century an extraordinary group of women worked at the Harvard College Observatory. Known as “computers”, they charted the position ,and brightness of stars on a daily basis by applying mathematical formulae to the observations of their male colleagues who watched the sky. Harvard was unique in taking advantage of the burgeoning numbers of educated women in this way. When the observatory’s research was redirected towards photographing the heavens rather than observing them merely by eye, the duties of the “computers” expanded apace. Many of them would go on to extraordinary achievements in astronomy.

19世纪末，在哈佛大学天文台出现了一组杰出的女性团队。她们负责日常记录星球的位置和明亮程度，并对星象观察记录（当时观察星象主要由男性研究者负责）进行公式计算。她们是一群享有“计算机”之称的女子们。在启用数量激增的知识女性们来进行天文研究方面，哈佛堪称独一家。当天文台研究从过去的肉眼观察发展到了天空摄影时，这些“计算机们”的任务量激增，大多数的她们也开始了各自在天文学界伟大成就的征程。

• chart: v. 记录

• formulae: n. 公式

• burgeoning: adj. 迅速发展的

玻璃宇宙

The work of Harvard’s female staff was paid for largely by two other women, Anna Palmer Draper and Catherine Wolfe Bruce, heiresses with an enduring interest in astronomy. Dava Sobel, a former science writer for the New York Times who made her name with her bestselling first book, “ Longitude ” (1995), has spent several years poring over letters and studying archives in order to tell the story of the women-astronomers and their benefactors .

杰出的哈佛女研究者主要有两个人值得一提--Anna Palmer Draper 和 Catherine Wolfe Bruce。作为天文学的继承人，她们一直对天文保持着长久不衰的兴趣。 该书的作者Dava Sobel是《纽约时代》的前任科学作家。她的第一部作品《经度》（1995年）的畅销使她为大众所熟知。此前她花了好几年时间钻研信件并研究档案，最后为我们讲述了一个女天文学家们和她们的支持者的故事。

• heiresse: n. 女继承人

• enduring: adj. 持久的

• Longitude: n. 经度

• benefactor: n. 捐助者

一生都对星空有兴趣的Dava Sobel

The introduction of photography at the Harvard Ovservatory allowed the firmament to be captured on an unprecedented scale on eight by ten-inch glass plates. These plates, about half a million in all by 1992, when the observatory switched to digital storage methods, comprise the “glass universe” of her book’s title. They allowed the course of stars to be followed not just for a few nights, but for decades. Discoveries made by astronomers on other continents could be cross-checked with Harvard’s library. Perhaps more important, when starlight was split with the aid of a prism its spectrum could likewise be recorded.

哈佛天文台星象摄影的引进，研究者们可以使用8*10英尺（在当时已经到达先进水平）的玻璃板记录星象的运动。当1992年数字储存普及时，玻璃板数量已高达五百多万，这就是该书书名“玻璃宇宙”一词的来源。玻璃板记录星象使得过去只能记录连续几个晚上的星球运行轨迹一下扩展到了几十年。其他地方的天文学家甚至可以在哈佛图书馆复查自己的星空记录轨迹。 （期待您的翻译，明天会有针对这句话的长难句解析哟~）

• firmament: n. 天空

• unprecedented: adj. 前所未有的

• switch: v. 转变

• comprise: v. 包括

These spectra resemble long rainbow-coloured strips ( rendered in black and white on the plates’ photographic emulsion ) interspersed with numerous dark lines. Scientists would come to understand that the gaps in a spectrum are due to the absorption of light by the atoms of chemical elements that compose a star’s outer layers. As one astronomer triumphantly declared, the ability to divine a star’s constituents from its spectrum “made the chemist’s arms millions of miles long”. Stellar spectroscopy would also reveal other physical attributes of stars such as their temperature, eventually giving rise to the new field of astrophysics.

这些光谱和彩虹很像，由色彩缤纷的条带（在相机胶卷中是黑白色的）伴随着大量的黑线散布开。如此科学家们发现，光谱空隙是由于星球外层的化学元素原子吸收光线而产生。一位天文学家自豪地宣布，根据光谱可探测星球成分这一发现“让化学家们的研究可伸展到地球几千万公里之外” 。星球光谱学还可揭示星辰的其他物理属性，如星球气候。这一系列的研究为天体物理学研究开拓出了一个新的领域。

• strip: n. 条，带

• render: v. 使成为

• emulsion: n. 乳状液

• intersperse: v. 散布

星体辐射光谱

This extraordinary photographic record offered the Harvard Observatory team the chance to learn a great deal more about the stars. During routine studies of the plates in 1893, for example, Williamina Fleming found a nova, only the tenth to have been observed by astronomers in the West. She would go on to discover nine more. Annie Cannon catalogued hundreds of thousands of stars, in the process inventing a stellar classification system that is still in use by astronomers today.

这种奇特的记录方式为哈佛天文台工作的女性们打开了更多星象研究的视野。在1893年对天体的常规研究期间，Williamina Fleming发现了一颗新星，这是西方天文学家发现的第十颗新星。然而她的发现不止于此，Annie Cannon在创造恒星分类系统的过程中，发现了成千上万的恒星。该系统至今仍被现在的天文学家所采用。恒星周期性的忽明忽暗深深地吸引着Henrietta Leavitt。